1. Preamble

1.1. Copyright and License

This document, Scientific Computing with free software on GNU/Linux HOWTO,
is copyrighted (c) 2002 by Manoj Warrier.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the
GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
with no Invariant Sections,
with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts.
A copy of the license is available
here

1.2. Disclaimer

No liability for the contents of this document is accepted.
Use of the concepts, examples, links and information is entirely at
your own risk.
There may be errors and inaccuracies, that could damage your system,
waste your time, etc... Proceed with caution, and although
this is unlikely, the author takes no responsibility whatsoever.

All copyrights are held by their respective owners, unless
specifically noted otherwise. Use of a term in this document
should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark
or service mark. Naming of particular products, software or
brands should not be seen as endorsements

I have not used many of the software applications to which links are provided.
There are simply too many applications that do the same thing,
that one cannot be expected to have used all of them. In a book
on Scientific Computing using GNU/Linux, one would
mention ones favorite tool to carry out a task and describe it in
detail. However this is a howto providing links to various
available free tools for scientific computing and may contain
links to some software that promises much but delivers little
and vice versa.

1.3. Motivation

This howto mainly consists of the links provided at
http://Scilinux.sourceforge.net which has to be disbanded due to a name
conflict. The best alternative seems to be to make it a Linux document
and host it at the LDP site. Another reason is that there seems to be
many free software applications doing the same things. We hope to provide links to
the available software thereby making it easy for the scientific community
to make a choice without spending much time.

1.4. Credits / Contributors

In this document, I have the pleasure of acknowledging:

Linus Trovalds, Richard M. Stallman and their merry men for
Linux, GNU and also for indirectly broadening various
perspectives which were not really obvious.

A host of colleagues and friends from the
Institute for Plasma Research, India
for discussions at various times.

Vasudha my wife for letting me do what I wish and egging me on
with comments like "let us hope that you will finish at least
this project"

Shishir and Ashoka are co-authors of this document because such a
collection of links was Shishir's idea and Ashoka is always
contributing by providing links, suggestions and a second point
of view. They will be helping me maintain this HOWTO too.

1.5. Feedback

Feedback is most certainly welcome for this document. Send
your additions, comments and criticisms to the following
email address : <m_war at users.sourceforge.net>.